cfabbro's recent activity

  1. Comment on Inside the surreal world of $20,000 pet portraits (gifted link) in ~life.pets

    cfabbro
    (edited )
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    Was it really necessary to call people "out of touch" and "stupid idiots" because they spent that much on a pet portrait? I get it, it's a lot of money to a lot of people, and could have...

    Was it really necessary to call people "out of touch" and "stupid idiots" because they spent that much on a pet portrait? I get it, it's a lot of money to a lot of people, and could have potentially been put to better use. But I feel like you're also missing the fact that, at least in this case, it was a fairly sizeable oil painting... which is not something you can get typically get commissioned for "a couple hundred bucks" or even $1k in most cases. And it's not like that money is disappearing into the ether. It went to an artist who likely spent a significant amount of time and resources making the piece, not to mention all the time they spent over their life developing those artistic skills, and building their business.

    I personally wouldn't spend $20k on a pet portrait, nor could I afford to... but I totally understand the sentiment and desire to have something like that done. I recently lost my dog, Quincy, and have been considering commissioning a piece of art to remember him by, which is why I posted this topic. My price rage is in the "couple hundred bucks" range though, so I do get where you're coming from. But I also don't think it's fair or productive to look down on and deride anyone who chose to spend significantly more than that.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Medieval historian and game developer, Jason Kingsley CBE, reacts to Manor Lords in ~humanities.history

    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Yeah, I personally wouldn't recommend completely disabling the combat, as that makes the game far too easy, and a lot less interesting too. But to each their own. Some people just want to build...

    Yeah, I personally wouldn't recommend completely disabling the combat, as that makes the game far too easy, and a lot less interesting too. But to each their own. Some people just want to build nice looking settlements, and that's cool.

    But even for people not really interested in the combat, I would recommend only just changing the AI lord to "responsive" so that he doesn't just conquer the entire map while you're learning the game. And since the raiders are easy enough to deal with using the initial resources the game gives you (20 spearman worth of gear), and since killing their camps actually gives you much needed resources, I would recommend leaving their settings as is. cc: @fefellama

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games

    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    But it is though. If you as a consumer purchase an online game which has licensed assets from another company for use in that game, and those licenses expire, your rights as a consumer do not...

    But it is though. If you as a consumer purchase an online game which has licensed assets from another company for use in that game, and those licenses expire, your rights as a consumer do not supersede the rights of the company that licensed their content to the game's developer.

    Should Ubisoft have negotiated perpetual licenses instead of limited time/ongoing ones so they actually could legally release an offline mode for the game after they shut down their own servers? Yeah, probably. But to do so would have undoubtedly cost them a significant amount more money for those licenses, if the companies involved are even willing to grant those kind of licenses anymore to begin with now that DRM is a standard expectation in the industry.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games

    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Sorry, but that is a pretty naive expectation, IMO, and also not how liability works since behaving in good faith and fair dealing is an obligation in contract law. And any online game company...

    Sorry, but that is a pretty naive expectation, IMO, and also not how liability works since behaving in good faith and fair dealing is an obligation in contract law. And any online game company that did something like that, sneakily releasing an offline mode for their players to download right before the game asset licenses expired, would likely end up getting justifiably sued by the asset rights holders.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Many widely used reproductive health apps fail to protect highly sensitive data, study finds in ~health

    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Done. cc: @sparksbet BTW, I won't be around much for the next week or two or three, since we're in the middle of doing a bunch of work around our house in prep for potentially putting it on the...

    Done. cc: @sparksbet

    BTW, I won't be around much for the next week or two or three, since we're in the middle of doing a bunch of work around our house in prep for potentially putting it on the market. So if you or anyone else needs topic edits done in that time, it's probably better to ping @mycketforvirrad or @Deimos asking for help instead of me. I will still try to check in at least once a day to help out where I can, but for the next week I'm going to be doing lots of pretty physically demanding landscaping work, so I likely won't have much spare energy left for doing regular maintenance stuff on Tildes.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc

    cfabbro
    Link
    Can I Climb Skyscraper in Prague? | Urban Climbing with Adam Ondra cc: @rosco... Adam Ondra's finger strength, endurance, and recovery is absolutely insane. That is by far the most impressive...

    Can I Climb Skyscraper in Prague? | Urban Climbing with Adam Ondra

    cc: @rosco... Adam Ondra's finger strength, endurance, and recovery is absolutely insane. That is by far the most impressive climbing I think I've ever seen.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games

    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link
    The video author hand waves away the "licensing constraints" issue, implying it's just an excuse being used by Ubisoft... but I'm pretty sure the licensing Ubisoft is referring to is actually...

    The video author hand waves away the "licensing constraints" issue, implying it's just an excuse being used by Ubisoft... but I'm pretty sure the licensing Ubisoft is referring to is actually related to the cars in the game, not the music. The game featured loads of real models from real car brands, which they almost certainly had to license from those brands. As exemplified by the fact that despite all the real models from real brands included in the game, there are no Subaru, Mitsubishi, Toyota / Lexus, or Porsche cars in The Crew despite it being a racing game and those brands being well known for their sports cars... likely because they couldn't acquire (or didn't want to pay for) licenses for those brands.

    And since The Crew was also primarily designed to be an online game, those licensing deals were likely not perpetual, as is typically negotiated for in single player/offline racing games, but instead were an ongoing cost, or potentially time limited so needed to be renegotiated/renewed every X years. And so it might not be as simple as, "they should just release the server code, or add an offline mode" since to do that they would probably also have to modify all the game's car assets so they no longer represented real car models, which require licenses to use.

    16 votes

  8. Comment on Medieval historian and game developer, Jason Kingsley CBE, reacts to Manor Lords in ~humanities.history

    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    It depends on the settings you choose. There is an opposing AI lord who can conquer regions and you can go to war with, and a Raider faction that sets up camps in regions and can occasionally raid...

    Is it more of a side thing that only shows up briefly or is it an integral part of the game (at least in its current state)?

    It depends on the settings you choose. There is an opposing AI lord who can conquer regions and you can go to war with, and a Raider faction that sets up camps in regions and can occasionally raid your village. But you can adjust the raiding frequency, the initial and max amount of raider camps, and the aggressiveness of the opposing AI Lord. Or you can even totally disable them both if you just want to make yourself pretty looking village and not have to worry about combat. ;)

    2 votes

  9. Comment on US Supreme Court denies California’s plea for immunity for COVID-19 deaths at San Quentin prison in ~health

  10. Comment on Apple, Netflix Amazon want to change how they pay Hollywood stars in ~movies

  11. Comment on Movie of the Week #29 - The Zone of Interest in ~movies

  13. Comment on Donald Glover surprise-drops a new Childish Gambino album, Atavista, featuring Ariana Grande, 21 Savage and more in ~music

  15. Comment on Medieval historian and game developer, Jason Kingsley CBE, reacts to Manor Lords in ~humanities.history

    cfabbro
    Link Parent
    No worries. I'm sure lots of people didn't even know about his channel, so your comment was appreciated. The more people recommending it the better. He puts out awesome and super interesting...

    No worries. I'm sure lots of people didn't even know about his channel, so your comment was appreciated. The more people recommending it the better. He puts out awesome and super interesting stuff, so deserves to get more attention, IMO.

    p.s. Feel free to submit any of his content you find particularly interesting yourself too. The more submitters the merrier. :)

    4 votes

  16. Comment on Medieval historian and game developer, Jason Kingsley CBE, reacts to Manor Lords in ~humanities.history

    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    YVW! :) Manor Lords is pretty good, IMO. It's a bit barebones at the moment though, and also a tad buggy, but you can tell there is a very solid foundation for the devs to build on. The building...

    YVW! :)

    Manor Lords is pretty good, IMO. It's a bit barebones at the moment though, and also a tad buggy, but you can tell there is a very solid foundation for the devs to build on. The building system is genuinely impressive, as is the combat system. And, as mentioned in the video, everything feels reasonably authentic and accurate to the time period.

    However, TBH, I don't know if I would actually recommend most people buy it in its current state, other than hardcore city builder fans (like myself), and/or people obsessed with the middle ages (also like myself). Since ATM it feels more like a tech demo than a proper game, and you can get through all the available content in about 10-20 hours of play. And right now it doesn't yet have a ton of replayability either, unless you want to experiment, or build more villages for fun. But hopefully now that they've made it big, they can hire some additional developers to help them speed up the development. And with any luck, in a few years it will be well worth recommending to everyone. :)

    4 votes

  17. Comment on Google Cloud accidentally deletes UniSuper’s online account due to ‘unprecedented misconfiguration’ in ~tech

    cfabbro
    Link Parent
    Oh damn. Super cool! That sounds absolutely fascinating! If you even can (assuming it isn't classified), I would love to hear about some of the stuff you worked on. EMP recovery especially sounds...

    Oh damn. Super cool! That sounds absolutely fascinating! If you even can (assuming it isn't classified), I would love to hear about some of the stuff you worked on. EMP recovery especially sounds really interesting!

    4 votes

  18. Comment on How GPS warfare is playing havoc with civilian life in ~tech

  19. Comment on A Study In Scarlet & Blue in ~comics

    cfabbro
    Link
    The author seems to have deleted all the dropbox files for their comics (or they got DMCAd?). :(

    This item was deleted

    The author seems to have deleted all the dropbox files for their comics (or they got DMCAd?). :(

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Carbon dioxide pipelines and underground injection can cut greenhouse gas, but community opposition is fierce in ~enviro